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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

In October 2018, IPCC published a Special Report arguing that: warming
of 2°C would be disastrous, especially in tropical zones, bringing heatwaves,
wildfires, acid seas, and more intense rainfall (esp. cyclones); to keep the rise
within the target of 1.5°C, emissions must fall 45% by 2030, and be net zero by 2050.
The report also flagged the risk to the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets (UN-IPCC,
2018). The report has seemingly been confirmed by daily news reports of more

and more climate-related events: extreme weather; record temperatures,
especially in Europe; graphic images of melting in the Arctic and the Himalayas;
and of forest fires, especially in the Amazon. Monitoring bodies show that
emissions have continued to grow at an increasing rate, and that almost all
the net increase since around 1990 has come from Asia (see for example the
analyses at OurWoldInDate.org).

As a result, over the last couple of years, the appreciation of the present
and the future has rapidly changed:
the goal of 1.5 to 2˚C warming may already be already out of reach

while earlier reports dwelt on impacts “by the end of the 21 century,”
st
the time-scale is now within 2030–2050.

the scientists now know much more about climate change, but also
know that there is yet much more that they do not know, particularly
about how the various impacts may interact, and what will happen
when the polar ice sheets and the Himalayan glaciers melt.
In early 2019, an international group of climate scientists launched the
“Green New Deal” with a chilling message: “If action is not taken it will take the
planet into an unprecedented climate future if we compare it to what has happened

during all of human evolutionary history” (Hans-Otto Pörtner in Vox, 2019).
A journalist, David Wallace-Wells (2019), began his The Uninhabitable Earth
with a simple line: “It is worse, much worse, than you think.”

Climate Change, Inequality, and Politics
The reports of the UN and other international bodies present predictions

of future climate change and its impacts, and suggest measures for mitigation
of the changes by reducing emissions, and for adaptation to the impacts. These
bodies are severely constrained in what they can say about politics. As a result,
these reports can say what is happening, and what has to be done, but not
how the impacts will be felt and how the politics may play out.

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